What does a retouched doctoral thesis about the construction of confessional identity in Reformation Europe offer to readers of this journal? Primarily, I think, it provides a meditation on the principles of citation developed by careful editors in Renaissance Europe (who in this case was also the publisher) when compiling a vernacular handbook containing reliable source material. The various editions and revisions of Jean Crespin’s Livre des martyrs (occasionally prohibited from using that convenient title by Geneva’s government for reasons of sixteenth-century political prudence) provide a textbook example (pun intended) of how to edit source material in the Renaissance.
Tucker’s major purpose is to observe Crespin working cautiously along the edge of Calvinist confessional orthodoxy, especially with regard to Eucharistic theology, when presenting his information either as martyrology before the outbreak of the French Wars of Religion, or subsequently as a historical narrative of the often-bloody origins of the French Reformed church. Tucker notes that “Crespin drew a distinction between his historical and his martyrological work,” most noticeable when printing confessions of faith by martyrs, despite an “overwhelming overlap in material elsewhere” (89).
The book is organized around four theological outliers who populate various editions of Crespin’s martyrologies: Hussites, Waldensians (who receive two chapters, one before and one after their acceptance to Calvinist doctrine), early Lutheran martyrs, and a few nonseditious preachers slaughtered after the Peasant War had ended. Obviously, each group presented different problems for admission to martyr status in Crespin’s and Calvin’s Geneva. One of the book’s real strengths is to illustrate Crespin’s (and Calvin’s) attempt to fit Luther into a grand narrative of an ongoing Reformation, despite their significant doctrinal differences—also published by Crespin. His Calvinist martyrologies, as Brad Gregory noted, include caveats about Hussite and Waldensian beliefs but never about those of early Lutheran martyrs, whose statements have been arranged “to create conformity on important issues” (120).
Professor Tucker shows Crespin going to great lengths to ensure that the documents he offered his readers, sometimes translated from Latin or German, were always as accurate as possible while still suitable for his greater purpose. His fundamental tactics never varied: invent nothing, but omit whatever seemed irrelevant to his purposes—above all, anything contradicting Calvin’s doctrinal positions—and abridge his citations. Crespin was generally skeptical of any miraculous circumstances narrated about martyrs and invariably hostile to references about possible relics of martyrs, but unable to resist juicy tales of swift and ugly punishments afflicting those who executed them.
Crespin had the good fortune to rely upon two careful contemporary martyrologists, the Anglican John Foxe and the Luthean Ludovicus Rabus. Professor Tucker has the good fortune to say something pertinent while standing upon some sturdy academic shoulders. The two largest belong to Catholics: Crespin’s bibliographer, Jean-Etienne Gilmont, in Europe, and the dean of comparative martyrologists, Brad Gregory, in America. Your reviewer is also cited accurately at appropriate moments.
